Informational Resources

While many of Pact's services and programs focus on expectant parents who are considering adoption, we also support birth parents who are negotiating the complexities of open adoption relationships after placement. If you are looking for other services we will strive to connect you with resources that will be useful to you. Below we have listed some of our favorite publications, blogs, and organizations of and for birth parents and expectant parents, as well as some about search and reunion. We have also included some blogs about adoption in general as well as adult adoptees and adoptive parents because we believe it can be really useful to understand other members of the adoption triad.

For more information about open adoption, please see Open Adoption articles in our Resources section.

Pact's Favorite Birth Parent Blogs

Amstel Life
"24-year-old NC State alum and Marketing/Public Relations professional in Raleigh. I'm a pro-life advocating, Jesus loving, watermelon craving, accident-prone, recovering perfectionist who happens to be a birthmom. Follow along as I navigate my way through this crazy journey called open adoption..."

A Birth Mother Voice
Having been on her journey of motherhood for over 20 years, Kelsey blogs "to tell people my story, my thoughts, my trials, my heartaches, my pride and my joys which include 2 open adoptions."

The Chronicles of Munchkin Land
"I believe that adoption as it exists today, whether foster, international or domestic, needs vast ethical reform. I generally hate adoption agencies, with a few exceptions. I think advertising 'available children' online is beyond smarmy. I believe that successful open adoptions are possible but not with the amount of preparation that agencies are currently giving or, rather, not giving families."

Online Birth Parent Resources

Birth Mom Buds
BirthMom Buds is an organization and website that provides peer counseling, support, encouragement, and friendship to pregnant women considering adoption as well as women who have already placed children for adoption.

"Birth" Mothers Exploited by Adoption
A website of women who feel they were exploited by the adoption industry. They tell their stories and offer cautionary tales of what expectant mothers considering adoption placement should watch out for.

Concerned United Birthparents
CUB is a national organization serving those touched by adoption with a focus on birthparents, long the forgotten people of the adoption community.

Domestic Infant Adoption Advice
Recommendations after 28 years of child placement work from social worker Bill Betzen. Includes suggestions for those considering placement, definitions and information about open adoption.

Get Real with Yourself
A free, confidential pregnancy education program of Lutheran Family & Children's Services to assist women and men to consider and learn about various parenting options.

KidSake Adoption Newsletter
Patricia is herself a birthmother who has lived out an open adoption for over 25 years. She has written a book and has a monthly enewsletter in which she writes about her experiences and offers advice about adoption for birth parents.

Open Adoption Resources & Support
Website designed and maintained by birth mother Brenda Romanchik, who placed a child over 25 years ago and has lived in an open adoption between her own family and that of the child she placed for adoption.

On Your Feet Foundation
"Our goal is to assist birth mothers in achieving the personal and financial independence they need to take care of themselves and their families by creating opportunities for them to find their footing after placing a baby for adoption."

Books that Pact Recommends

Below are some books that Pact carries in our store that we feel are especially valuable for expectant parents considering adoption and birth parents who have already placed their child for adoption. If you are a birth or expectant parent interested in one of these titles and cannot afford to purchase them please contact us and we will provide them to you free of charge.

Because I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption, Dischler. This unique blend of Patricia's personal story (20 years post-placement) combined with her advice and research as to what expectant parents considering an adoption can anticipate at each stage of the process is very helpful because it goes beyond the placement to adulthood of the child placed.

Birthright, Strauss. This book is filled with stories: direct quotes from birth parents, adopted adults, and adoptive parents who have experienced search and reunion. Guidelines for beginning a search are included.

Making Room In Your Heart, Duxbury. This book is a great guide to having successful open adoption relationships. Micky, a therapist as well as an adoptive parent (and Pact member!), interviewed hundreds of triad members about their life stories and experiences with open adoption. Her book helps both adoptive and birth parents address their fears and concerns while offering them the support to put the child's needs at the center of adoption.

The Third Choice, Moscone & Foge. There are few books in print for or about birth mothers that reflect a belief in the benefits of openness. This is a book that accurately details the predictable emotional steps in the journey of placement, from the initial decision through common events during the first year after placement.

Search & Reunion Resources

We believe adopted people deserve to know their full heritage and should have access to all of their records and birth history. We do not offer search services but are happy to offer you the following resources that may help you on your journey toward reconnecting with your birth relatives. If your child is a minor, then your connection with them will need to be arbitrated through and with their adoptive parents. After they turn 18, they legally are an adult and can make their own decisions regarding a relationship with you.

Support Organizations
These groups can give you personal assistance finding a local support group or locating a qualified, reputable search person, or help you become part of a registry:

Search Consultants
Finding someone to help you search is often useful. We are not in the business of recommending such people. We suggest that you be careful to use someone who has personal or professional experience with search to ensure the legitimacy of the services. Often it is advantageous to work with someone who has experience in the state or region in which your child was born or with the particular agency and/or placement professional that completed the legal part of your adoption. We list below an organization of professional search consultants based in the United States, and a consultant who is fluent in both Spanish and English.

The Do-It-Yourself Route
It is very important to understand both the process of how to search and the emotional effects of reunion and reunion attempts. The following are good books to get you started:

Adoption Searches Made Easier, Culligan. Written by a licensed private investigator, this step-by-step guide discusses where to start, laws and rights of the searcher, how to utilize various organizations including government agencies, libraries, and historical societies, as well as a listing of addresses, by region, of these various organizations.

Birthright, Strauss. This book is filled with stories: direct quotes from birth parents, adopted adults, and adoptive parents who have experienced search and reunion. Guidelines for beginning a search are included.

Pact's Favorite Adoptee Blogs

A Birth Project
Lisa Marie Rollins, Pact's former Education Specialist and founder of Adopted & Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora, writes: "This blog began with a two-pronged focus: 1) a place to share the dynamics of my personal search for my birth family and 2) as a place to consider my experiences as a Black girl adopted by white parents, 'my life as a TRA'--a transracial adoptee. It's been a wild ride-if you read this blog from the beginning you'll find my birth parents WITH me and see my continued struggles as I go through this crazy process of search and reunion."

Ethnically Incorrect Daughter
Sumeia Williams, a Vietnamese adoptee, blogs about how her experiences and perspective were shaped by growing up in a segregated white town. "As the only Vietnamese, only Asian in the entire town, I wouldn't see another live Vietnamese face until I was around 11 years old. I grew up feeling as if I'd been cut and pasted onto a painting with too many pieces left behind."

Harlow's Monkey
Jae Ran Kim, Korean adoptee, shares her perspective as a self-described "agent of change" from within the institutional structures that historically have been used to discriminate against those our society does not value. "I am a social worker who doesn't believe that social work is just about 'saving' people or 'helping' people. Social work is about reform and empowerment, not about social control."

Heart, Mind & Seoul
Reflections of a Korean adoptee and adoptive parent. "As I've processed through my range of experiences, thoughts and feelings about how adoption speaks to me personally, my journey has led me to discover a wealth of paradoxes of what it means to be an adoptee, as well as an adoptive parent. And perhaps like you, I am one who simply tries to do the very best that I can to both navigate through and negotiate across the broad scope of intensity that is adoption, all while being true to myself and honoring whatever thoughts and feelings may come my way."

John Raible Online
John Raible, a brilliant analyst of transracial adoption issues, often explores his own experience as an African American transracial adoptee and as an adoptive parent. "In order to support today's transracial families, adoption professionals, educators, and others must renew their commitment to the lofty ideals of racial integration. However, instead of a limited and outdated colorblind approach, an explicitly race-conscious yet postmodern (i.e., non-essentializing) anti-racism that acknowledges the enduring significance of race (and the durability of racism) offers transracial families a way to participate actively and effectively in the discourses of race and adoption."

May I Have A Word?
Liberty Hultberg uses hair as a springboard for exploring her experiences growing up biracial and adopted in a white world and coming into her racial identity as an adult. "Hair is rich with symbolic literary meaning (as well as political), and it's been quite a metaphor in my life. So, in this blog you'll find...ruminations about family, adoption, adoption legislation, race, and--probably most often--hair."

Sunshine Girl on A Rainy Day
As a former foster child, Lisa advocates for foster children, publicizing the challenges that they face and addressing their developmental and emotional needs. "My mother died when I was ten years old. My father remarried the following year. When his new wife asked my father to choose between the two of us, his choice was to abandon me. From the moment that I entered foster care placement, I crossed the threshold into a dark, new world. I was no longer my father's child; I had taken on a new identity. I was a 'group home girl,' and group home girls were reportedly 'easy.'"

Transracial Korean Adoptee Nexus
Nate is a journalist and an adoptee who combines his personal experience with his journalistic knowledge to address issues related to adoption and race. "This blog is a space to link issues of social inequalities to systems of oppression and structures of power. It's a space to claim transracial Korean adoption as an identity that exists not necessarily half of one and half of another, but as a valid composite of the Pan-Asian identity."

Pact's Other Favorite Blogs

Anti-Racist Parent
"Love Isn't Enough - On Raising A Family in a Color Struck World." This blog has an editorial team and a collection of writers who blog on topics related to parenting and race, some of them are adoptive parents, some adoptees, some unrelated to adoption.

Third Mom
Mom through Korean adoption Margie Persheid writes about her personal experiences with adoption and about adoption justice and reform at Angry Adoptive Mom.

Dawn Friedman's Work
White mom of a biracial daughter who was adopted in an open adoption blogs about open adoption and sometimes racial issues in adoption.

Grown In My Heart
A place where all adoptive parents, adoptees, and first moms know they feel safe to air their opinions, regardless of differences. It is a group of women joined, somehow, by adoption.

Racialicious
A blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out daily updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our no-holds-barred critique of questionable media representations.

National Adoption Resources

American Adoption Congress
An organization that comprises individuals, families and organizations committed to adoption reform and includes all members of the triad: birth parents, adoptees and adoptive parents. "We represent those whose lives are touched by adoption or other loss of family continuity."

Child Welfare Information Gateway
Connects child welfare and related professionals to comprehensive information and resources to help protect children and strengthen families. National and regional information as well as searchable database of articles.

Evan B Donaldson Institute
Mission to provide leadership that improves adoption laws, policies and practices - through sound research, education and advocacy - in order to better the lives of everyone touched by adoption.